cheese_goddess
Anyway, sorry for causing you to ban the account.
Edit: I created this account not to break HN rules with, but to contribute my (limited) knowledge of dairy science and cheesemaking technology which I thought would be interesting to HN users, since it's not very common. I got embroiled in flame wars because threads about food invite ideologically driven posts, and because my username acts as a red flag to some users. Just this last couple of weeks I had three or four try to use it as an argument against me, to imply I have some kind of ulterior motive (profit?) for the things I post.
I believe I was being targeted and dogpiled on and that I was not getting into any constructive conversations with anyone, because all the conversations I cared to join (about food or about the environment) were always very one-sided and ideologically driven.
Oh. I also created this account because personal characteristics force me to compartmentalise my online presence.
It totally went to shit, I admit. Sorry again.
> Typical formulation for Analogue Pizza Cheese, from Fundamentals of Cheese Science:
Ingredient Level added (g/100g Blend)
Casein and caseinates 23.00
Vegetable oil 25.00
startch 2.00
Emulsifying salts 2.00
Flavour 2.00
Flavour enhancer 2.00
Acid regulator 0.40
Color 0.04
Preservative 0.10
Water 38.50
Condensate^ 7.00
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169697
The list above is for "analogue pizza cheese" but that's just the most common use of this kind of "cheese": as pizza topping.
So, in a way, "vegan cheese" is not the worst kind of thing in the market that's labelled as "cheese" while not even close to the real thing.
Btw, many people who are not vegan or vegetarian eat this stuff and think it's cheese. I mean because it's on pizza. And it kiind of melts, right? What else do you expect to find sort of melting on top of pizza? Cheese!
So, yeah, 100%, you can totally and absolutely fool consumers by emulating the look, taste and feel of a real foodstuff. But usually that's because those consumers are so used to eating fake stuff anyway that they have forgotten what the real thing tastes like... if they ever even tasted it.
Consumers are not reducing their meat consumption. Instead meat consumption is increasing:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?ta...
> As a global average, per capita meat consumption has increased approximately 20 kilograms since 1961; the average person consumed around 43 kilograms of meat in 2014. This increase in per capita meat trends means total meat production has been growing at a much faster than the rate of population growth.
As is production:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?ta...
Worldwide.
https://youtu.be/8uN8PUU5U2Q?t=1463
(Shows Beyond Burger placed next to meat burgers in a French supermarket).
"Real vegan cheese" should not be a problem as long as you're selling a real product. The problems would begin if you were selling real cheese as "Really vegan cheese".
To be clear, the false assumptions are that her product is cheese, when it's not, and that it tastes, smells or feels like cheese, when it doesn't.
Klim™
I guess Keats™ is taken, and I can't trademark Team™, but I'll try.
Cargill, Danone and Nestle. Those companies, they are exemplars of environmentally responsible, ethical production of high-quality nutritious food that respects animal rights and human health:
> Cargill: the company feeding the world by helping destroy the planet
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/11/25/cargill-deforest...
> Cost of environmental damage linked to Nestlé, Danone and Mondelez rises sharply
> "A lot of major global corporations have effectively outsourced their environmental impact to their supply chains," said Dexter Galvin, global director of corporations and supply chains at CDP, a nonprofit group that collects environmental data from companies. "It's a blind spot, which means that most of their carbon emissions, water use and impact on deforestation escape public scrutiny."
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
> Animal rights campaigners are now urging the public to boycott Danone, Nestle and Yakult to stop the animal suffering.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/600145/Nestle-Yakult-and-D...
> Multiple reports have documented the widespread use of child labour in cocoa production, as well as slavery and child trafficking, throughout West African plantations, on which Nestlé and other major chocolate companies rely.[159][160][161][162][163] According to the 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, the children working are typically 12 to 15 years old.[164] The Fair Labor Association has criticised Nestlé for not carrying out proper checks.[165]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9#Slavery_and_child_...
In September 2017, an investigation[215] conducted by NGO Mighty Earth found that a large amount of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Nestlé and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana.[216][217][218] The countries are the world's two largest cocoa producers.[219][220]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9#Deforestation
I mean, who else would be investing in fake sausages?
Kefir, we don't even know how many or what bacteria it hosts, but we know it's a lot. Different studies have reported wildly different communities, but all of them with upwards of a dozen species. For example:
> Sequencing-Based Analysis of the Bacterial and Fungal Composition of Kefir Grains and Milks from Multiple Sources
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Aged hard cheese, unless made with raw milk, is usually inocculated with a couple of strains of lactic acid bacteria, but during aging a varied flora develops, of "adventitious bacteria" and yeasts from the environment.
To be honest though, I made kefir for a couple of years and I've been making cheese for about four now and I make the occasional yogurt now and then, but I'm still not convinced about the health claims of "probiotics". And I'm not the only one to be skeptical:
> A growing probiotics market has led to the need for stricter requirements for scientific substantiation of putative benefits conferred by microorganisms claimed to be probiotic.[7] Although numerous claimed benefits are marketed towards using consumer probiotic products, such as reducing gastrointestinal discomfort, improving immune health,[8] relieving constipation, or avoiding the common cold, such claims are not supported by scientific evidence,[7][9][10] and are prohibited as deceptive advertising in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission.[11] As of 2019, numerous applications for approval of health claims by European manufacturers of probiotic dietary supplements have been rejected by the European Food Safety Authority for insufficient evidence of beneficial mechanism or efficacy.[8][12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probiotic
Btw, you know what elese has plenty of lactic acid bacteria, therefore probiotics? Sourdough. Alhtough if you make kefir, you can use it instead of sourdough as a bread starter.
Agreed. 100%. What straw man?
btw, when did I say anything about "cow overpopulation"? I don't even know what that is?
Oh, wait. Of course. It's a straw man. Nevermind.
> Both the American Dietetic Association[0] and British Dietetic Association[1] confirm that a well-planned vegan diet is healthy for all stages of life.
The key words being "well-planned". As the Vegan Society says, most vegans have low homocysteine levels which is a clear indication that their diets are not "well planned" and put them in danger of heart disease, stroke and pregnancy complications, at least.
That is "most" vegans, in the words of the Vegan Society.
Then of course there's the vegans who feed their kids vegan diets without any planning at all and end up damaging their kids' health, or killing them:
> In 2002, a vegan couple from New Zealand was accused of child abuse after ‘failing to provide the necessities of life’ for their six-month-old child. Their son died of medical complications due to vitamin B12 deficiency after the parents left the hospital against medical advice to treat their son with herbal remedies (23). In addition, seven infants exclusively breastfed by vegan mothers developed nutritional vitamin B12 deficiency. Most of these children presented with hypotonia, lengths and weights below the third percentile, and psychomotor retardation that improved with the appropriate nutritional supplementation (24).
> As recently as 2005, despite the significant available literature on the potential risks of alternate diets, strict vegan parents were taken to court and charged with neglect after one of their children died of malnutrition (25). Their other four children were all found to be below the lowest appropriate percentile for height and weight for their age. These parents avoided taking their children to see physicians and the children were not immunized.
https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/2528709
So, well-planned diets, my foot. Most vegans have no idea what to do to stay healthy while eating their preferred diet. And do you know why? Because irresponsible internet vegans like you try very hard to hide the fact that a vegan diet is a health risk. The Vegan Society at least is honest about that:
> The risk to these groups alone is reason enough to call on all vegans to give a consistent message as to the importance of B12 and to set a positive example. Every case of B12 deficiency in a vegan infant or an ill informed adult is a tragedy and brings veganism into disrepute.
https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/...
My guess is that this is because those folks care deeply about their principles and don't just use them as a bludgeon to win internet arguments, like you guys.
> Such recommendations include for example: having a mostly plant-based diet, focus on seasonal and local foods, reduction of food waste, consumption of fish from sustainable stocks only and reduction of red and processed meat, highly-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages.
https://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary-guideli...
But a plant-based diet is not vegan (although a vegan diet is plant-based), it's a diet where the majority of calories come from plants:
> A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods.[1][2][3] Plant-based diets encompass a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of plant products such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.[4][5] They do not need to be vegan or vegetarian[6][7] but are defined in terms of low frequency of animal food consumption.[8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant-based_diet
For example, the Mediterranean diet is a plant-based diet:
> The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits,[3] and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and low consumption of non-fish meat products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet
A plant-based diet includes fish, dairy, eggs and meat, although meat in moderate to small quantities.
Vegans certainly like to pretend that "plant-based" means "vegan", but that's just their propaganda. Please don't help spread such lies.
https://www.mekkographics.com/meat-consumption-by-country-an...
The United States, China and Brazil produce the most beef:
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
In my reading, there is a great inequality in distribution of both consumption and production and if both could be equalized downwards, that would mean a significant reduction overall.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions
According to the article, 26% of all GHG emissions are from food production.
Of that:
31% of all food production comes from livestock and fisheries.
27% comes from crop production, with 6% for animal feed and 21% for human food.
24% comes from land use, 8% for human food and 16% for livestock.
18% comes from ransport and other emissions from the supply chain.
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
Namely energy use in industry and buildings, and transportation.
Even taking into account the power used for transport, storage etc, of food, the food system as a whole accounts for one quarter of emissions:
https://ourworldindata.org/food-ghg-emissions
So even if we stopped eating any food at all tomorrow, we'd still not be stopping climate change, which is caused ... say it with me ... by burning fossil fuels.
Burning fossil fuels. <-.
,---'
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This!
Because from what I understand, most vegans do eat at least some meat and animal products once in a while. "Breaking vegan" they call it. And it's OK to do it as long as you're vegan, otherwise it's not right and you're a murderer.
Because only being vegan is an ethical stance. Where being vegan of course means posting vegan memes on twitter and stuff like that.
Btw, congratulations for sneaking real problems like B12 and other nutrient deficiencies suffered by vegans in with all the straw men:
> Most vegans show adequate B12 levels to make clinical deficiency unlikely but nonetheless show restricted activity of B12 related enzymes, leading to elevated homocysteine levels. Strong evidence has been gathered over the past decade that even slightly elevated homocysteine levels increase risk of heart disease and stroke and pregnancy complications.
https://www.vegansociety.com/resources/nutrition-and-health/...
My bingo card says: "Typical irresponsible dismissal of the health risks of a vegan diet".
That we also destroy ecosystems directly must also be stressed as you say. And the two are indeed interlinked, for example habitat destruction causes both biodiversity loss and decreased ability to bind carbon. This "land use change" is a major source of emissions from agriculture and industrial farming is the main reason for it, for example rainforests razed to make space to grow soya to feed to cows. So yeah. I think we agree more than we disagree on that.
Also, you never said you are a kidney stone patient. Just to be clear, are you? Is that why you're staying away from potatoes? Because you didn't say you are and I figured you were avoiding potatoes as a precaution against developing kidney stones.
I haven't watched it but from what I've read about it, it seems like ideologically driven propaganda rather than a documentary.
> in any case if most of the grain production isnt going for feeding humans, it is quite ridiculous.
Why? The title of the article is misleading. If you look at the second graph, it's obvious that the amount of grain that is eaten directly by humans (1337 tonnes) is greater than the amount that goes to any another single use (the next highest is animal feed at 987).
In fact if you sum all the other uses up from that graph they come to 1570 tonnes, where 245 of that is "processing & losses", and another 73 is "seeds". Those are categories that overlap with grains used to feed humans directly (and other uses also) so it's not clear they should be counted separately . In short, only 1252 tonnes are definitely used to do other things than to directly feed us (namely, they become feed and fuel). So despite what the article says, most of the grain we produce seems to go to feed humans directly.
And as the article points out, it's not "grain" in general that's not fed to humans, but corn ("maize"). Most wheat and rice does go to feed humans directly and only a tiny amount of wheat or rice goes to other uses.
So, misleading title.
Not a good wording. Climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss.
In general, there isn't any problem we're facing right now that's worse than climate change any way you look at it.
OK, same line of reasoning as above, I guess. Answer me this question please: how did we get the B12 we needed to stay helahty before we knew about B12, or any other vitamin, or were capable of creating in bioreactors?
I've had this conversation many times before: maybe animals need to be supplemented with B12 where you live, but not where I live and I'm pretty sure not in most of the world, either. If we couldn't get enough B12 from meat and animal products we'd have been in real trouble a very long time ago. Like a couple hundred thousand years ago, at least.
But I should not use the word "efficiency" in this kind of context because it's really so vague what "efficiency" means that it can be used to mean anything at all and justify any kind of conclusion at all, even completely contradictory conclusions. For example: are chickens "efficient"? Sure, because you can pack a hundred of them in a square meter! Aren't chickens really "inefficient"? Obviously, since you need one chicken to lay one egg a day!
Mea maxima culpa. Animals are not "efficient" producers of B12. Instead, eating the meat of animals is how we naturally acquire our B12. Regardless of who actually makes it. How does that sound? Better I hope.
One: yogurt. Yogurt is boiled milk fermented with mainly two lactic acid bacteria, Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacilus bulgaricus. During fermentation the milk is held at ~45°C (the optimal temperature for thermophilic bacteria).
Two: kefir. Kefir is fermented milk with a consistency that ranges from a loose drink to a thick yogurt, depending on how it's made. It is fermented with a rich culture of bacteria and yeasts found in "kefir grains" (in truth, an exopolysaccharide that houses the community). Kefir is fermented at room tempeatures (around 25°C).
Three: cheese. Cheesemaking begins with a fermentation step where lactobacili and lactococci are used to increase the acidity of milk to speed up its coagulation by rennet enzymes in a subsequent step. Some cheese recipes include an additional fermentation step where milk is "cooked" to a temperature favoring thermophilic bacteria. In all cases, the bacteria of the fermentation culture remain alive in the body of the cheese and impart flavors to it as it ages.
In none of those cases does fermentation without salt result in "rotting gunk". Cheese in particular can be made without any salt at all and such cheese can be preserved for at least a year in a temperature of 16-18°C, well within the range of tempetarues one can find in natural caves, cellars or mountain creameries. My reference for this is my experience with making saltless hard and soft cheeses for the last trhee years.
Obviously, if you leave yogurt, or even cheese at room temperature for a prolongued period of time, they will go off, but that's not what you're saying, correct?
Kefir, btw, can "hold" at room temperatures perhaps indefinitely. Although it does tend to go a bit stinky, probably because yeasts begin to dominate.
I'm totally aware that vegans consistently invade this kind of thread on HN to promulgate their vegan propaganda, like little prophets of malnutrition sent into the world by a god of famine, but this time, what was the lie? I can't see it.
As far as I can tell it's true that meat production and consumption is very unevenly distributed: the USA and Argentina produce almost double as much beeef as anybody else:
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#beef-and-buffalo-...
https://www.mekkographics.com/meat-consumption-by-country-an...
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sec...
Please don't spread dangerous lies! By saying that meat is destroying the planet you're distracting from the true source of climate change: oil.